JEM 7VWH

This JEM does not belong to me, I'm actually quite honored to have what used to be one of my dream guitar sitting in my house. It belongs to a friend of mine, Anthony Woen.

The look

I got a chance to analyze this JEM both in terms of sound and look. It's just gorgeous; its gold hardware, Edge Pro locking trem, vine tree inlay, jumbo frets, gotoh tuner, DiMarzio Evolutions and its monkey grip are just awesome!

The feel

It's the ancestor of the current Ibanez RG model, so naturally it has that oversized horns on its body just like my PGM and every other RG based guitars. The neck is just awesome! It's thin, meaning that it will help you run across the neck easily. Doesn't feel to good when you try to play chords here, a bit more thickness should help. It's thinner than my already flat PGM Prestige neck. I don't need to speak about the locking trem, it's just totally awesome, the same exact trem as what I have on my PGM.

Weight isn't too bad. It's an alder body guitar, it's supposed to be a bit heavier compared to a basswood guitar, but it isn't; in fact it is lighter than my PGM!

The sound

DiMarzio Evolution on the neck, middle and bridge. They're fantastic for modern hi-gain sound! The alder body and rosewood combination adds more tonal color to the overall sound. The JEM supposed to sound pretty bright due to the alder body but in fact it isn't that bright. It sounded pretty good on distortion pedals and tube pre-amp! Overtone harmonics are appearing on some spots in the neck, it has a strong punch in the mid-high mid area. Definitely a shredder's guitar! Either the neck and the bridge delivers punch and clarity. Roll back the volume and I get that sweet spot break-up sound.

On the clean channel, the neck pickup sounded like an SG. Very good for jazz runs, lots of fat tone that's good for chording as well. Combine the neck and the middle and I got a pretty subtle sounding clean signal, good for funk and general strumming. I didn't really use the middle pickup but mid+bridge gives me another good funk-type sound with some added treble. I don't really use the bridge pickup on the clean channel.

Sustain is pretty good. It doesn't hold as long as my PGM, but it does hold longer than every Strats that I've touched.

What it lacks

Nothing! This guitar is in fact one of the most versatile guitar on this planet. It does everything. However, not everyone will enjoy this guitar. The pickups are a bit too hot for me and I always prefer a single coil in the neck. Nonetheless, it's my preference; this guitar will surely blow you away if you're a Steve Vai fans or just someone looking for a HSH super strat.

The verdict

I compared this gorgeous JEM side by side with my PGM, and I recorded some tunes with both guitar on same settings just so you can hear the difference between how the JEM and the PGM sound. All clips started with my PGM first, and then the JEM later.

Clean signal: CLICK HERE

Chorus added: CLICK HERE

Screamer and delay: CLICK HERE

Fat crunch rhythm: CLICK HERE

I hope you enjoy this post.

Cheers and God bless ! :)

MY MODDED JEM-JR

Introduction
I just finished modding my Korean Ibanez JEM-JR WN today and I'm really glad with the result and I want to share it with all of you my dearest readers.

The original un-modded version of this guitar features an Ibanez ILT floating locking tremolo and Ibanez INF series pickups on all positions. It was my very first guitar that I own and not borrow from other people. It costs around $500 when it first came out and I pay almost the same price for that. I got lots of beautiful memories with this guitar, I learned a lot of materials using this guitar and it's been very friendly to me until today.

For some tone chasers, entry level Ibanez guitars probably won't please them as they sound crappy(sorry) and they feel crappy(sorry) as well. But not for me, this guitar is pretty versatile and reliable except that the ILT trem broke one day and I replaced it with Korean Floyd Rose. Now with the modifications, I even dare to compare my baby to some high-end good sounding Strat or Strat-like guitar, YEAH BABY !

Now onto the modifications

First of all, the modification that I did is to replace the trem of course as I mentioned above, the ILT proved to be a non reliable trem.

Then I replaced the pickups as usual with DiMarzios. On the neck and middle, I put Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2. They sounded SUPER AMAZING; the tone is very SRV 70-ish and works well with mild and heavy overdrive units. On the bridge I put PAF Pro and I got that Paul Gilbert tone instantly on my bridge position!

On a clean rig, the singles sounded very Strat-ish with all those glassy sparkly highs but with some extra mid punch while the PAF Pro sounds almost like a single coil but with more lows and mids and of course it's hotter than the others although not too much. All of the pickups are pretty low output and as I did with my PGM, I reduces the height of the neck pickup and increases the height of the bridge pickup to get instant less gain sound by just switching the pickup.

PAF Pro vs AT hum, VVHB2 vs Cruiser

The PAF Pro is not as hot as the AT humbucker and it lacks the mid punch that the AT humbucker has, but it has better high and clarity compared to the AT. The VVHB2 sounds much more like a hot strat compared to the Cruisers, but the Cruisers has more pronounced bottom and treble compared to the VVHB2. All of them are great but they're all different in terms of sound characteristics.

Nonetheless, they're all very impressive in terms of performance and tone. Easy to play with and sounds pretty well when combined together. No complaints, no flaw, it's like having a new guitar. I even dare to challenge someone with an American Deluxe strat on a tone match because it sounds almost like a vintage Strat with an LP humbucker now(or even better than that, I have 24 frets and floating trem, Strat comes with 22 mostly haha!).

Korean Floyd vs ILT vs Edge Pro

The new Floyd trem sounds okay to me. It's not as smooth as Edge Pro trem and it does not have extremely long sustain, but it's much better than the ILT tremolo. The tone that I'm getting from the trem is similar to the tone of a vintage style tremolo of a strat or something, twangy and rounded but not as twangy as a Telecaster. It does not stay in tune as good as the ILT and Edge Pro though because it has different string insertion mechanism.

More mods on the way

Next, I added capacitors on my volume knob as well as a resistor on parallel to make that treble bleed mod and reduce the output a little bit so the entire signal won't get too hot. But I also take out the tone knob and put the volume knob on the former tone knob routing. I get more volume by doing that. If I put Cruisers and AT humbucker, I'll probably get similar tone to my modded PGM ha ha !

Tone pot that blocks the tone

By the way, removing tone pot really helps the tone to get more volume and uncompressed feeling. That tone pot is actually a potentiometer or in an easier term: an adjustable resistor. Putting resistor in series with your signal will cause current reduction and thus you get lower output from your pickups. It also compressed the overall guitar sound a little bit. If you have the courage and heart to try something new, and if you rarely use your tone knob, try taking it/them out and hear the positive difference!

For this guitar, I won't be able to post audio clip or anything like that until probably next year when all my rigs will be transported back from Seattle to Indonesia. When that happens, we can probably hear some clips of me comparing the JEM and PGM using same FX units! How cool is that !!!

Visually unappealing

The overall modification sounds great but it DOESN'T look great. That's because now the single coil on the neck position does not cover the humbucker routing completely. I have to get a new pickguard to solve that aesthetic-related problem.

I don't really care though to be honest

As long as it sounds good, I don't complain. Right now, all I want to do is play that baby all day long and all night long. I plug it through a digital crappy(sorry) Korg Tonework AX1500 and now the overall tone that I'm getting is almost like using a POD X3 Live, very very lively thanks to those modifications.

I hope this post will be useful for everyone who reads this.

Cheers and God bless :)

p.s. One more week until I'm able to post audio clips to my posts!